1586

The Babington Plot to overthrow English queen Elizabeth I and replace her with her cousin Mary, Queen of Scots is uncovered thanks to a counter-intelligence codebreaking operation run by Sir Francis Walsingham. Babington and six co-conspirators are captured, tortured, and executed. Mary is sentenced to death, and executed the following year.

Incensed by Queen Elizabeth's support for the Dutch Revolt and English privateers, Sanish king Philip II orders his advisors to plan an invasion of England and begins construction on the Spanish Armada.

English Privateer Francis Drake voyages to the Caribbean to attack Spanish holdings and resupply the colony at Roanoke, successfully sacking Santo Domingo in Hispaniola and St. Augustine in Florida. Finding the Roanoke colony threatened by natives and extremely low on supplies, Drake offers to return the whole colony to England, and is accepted. Drake's ships bring the potato to England for the first time, having picked some up during a stopover in Colombia.

English privateer Thomas Cavendish embarks on a voyage to attack Spanish holdings that will eventually lead him to become the second Englishman to circumnavigate the globe.

In order to improve his chances of succeeding to the throne of England, King James VI of Scotland signs a treaty of alliance with Queen Elizabeth I and turns a blind eye to the death sentence placed upon his mother's head.

Belgian mathematician Simon Stevin is the first to demonstrate that two objects of different weight fall with the same speed, three years before Galileo.